Nothing gold can stay. Robert Frost knew it. Ponyboy knew it. And lovers of glorious rear-wheel-drive sport sedans with room for the family but attitudes for track day and affordable prices know it. The Kia Stinger was too good to last.
A report out of South Korea’s Auto Times says the least predictable car built by a mainstream automaker in years will cease production in April.
The Stinger is a passion project for Kia. It’s a rear-wheel-drive (optional all-wheel-drive) sport sedan with family living space and handling that makes the Audi A5 Sportback and BMW 4 Series Gran Coupe nervous.
It features either a 300-horsepower turbocharged 4-cylinder engine or a 368-horsepower 3.3-liter twin-turbo V6. Power goes through an 8-speed automatic transmission.
And if those sound like the stats of a European sport sedan, then you understand why the Stinger has always been such an oddity. It’s a genuine 4-door performance car from an affordable automaker, wearing the kind of name cars wore in the 1970s.
It starts at just $36,590, plus $1,105 shipping and handling — far less than most sedans of comparable performance.
There’s nothing else quite like it on the market. And it isn’t selling particularly well — Kia says it’s selling at about half of last year’s pace through the first three quarters.
That, reports say, may be enough to end a passion project. Kia has not yet responded to our attempts to confirm the reports.
But if the Stinger is gone, we should note, that doesn’t mean Kia has given up on producing cars capable of performance you don’t expect in the affordable classes. The quickest version of its new EV6 electric car, the EV6 GT, boasts 576 horsepower and a 0-60 mph time of just 3.5 seconds.
